OYSTER BAY, PALAWAN — For much of his adult life, the author watched American forces withdraw from overseas posts: the last convoy out of Iraq in 2011, Cold War-era infrastructure dismantled in Germany two years later. Last week, from a hilltop on the Philippine island of Palawan, he watched American power arrive.
What he saw was not a grand armada but a Philippine Navy detachment on the western coast of Palawan, facing the South China Sea. In the bay sat the BRP Malapascua, a Philippine Coast Guard vessel that had recently carried home marines wounded at Second Thomas Shoal, where a Chinese coast guardsman struck a Filipino marine with a wooden baton. The same ship was targeted by a Chinese military-grade laser in 2023, temporarily blinding crew members on its bridge.
The newest American investment on the shore is modest: a $975,000 contract for a boat repair facility with a portable gantry crane and improvements to an existing launch. It sits beside a pier built by the Philippines for its navy's landing vessels. Nearby, a small American unit called Task Force Ayungin advises and trains Philippine forces operating in contested waters. The 2026 buildup looks like this: a repair bay and a solicitation notice.
Infrastructure across the archipelago
Under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), American forces now have rotational access to nine Philippine military sites. Five date to 2016; four were added in 2023. Three of the new sites cluster in northern Luzon, facing the Luzon Strait and Taiwan beyond it. The fourth is Balabac, at the southern tip of Palawan, facing the Spratly Islands, where Manila is building a three-kilometer runway and American money is following with barracks, warehouses, and support infrastructure.
Funding has compounded across separate accounts: more than $82 million committed to the original sites by early 2023, another $128 million requested for EDCA construction in the following budget, and a separate $500 million foreign military financing package announced in July 2024 to modernize the Philippine armed forces and coast guard. Fuel farms, aprons, warehouses, and command centers are described in the language of disaster response. Fuel does not care what you call it.
In April 2024, the US Army flew its Typhon launcher to northern Luzon for an exercise. It never went home. The Typhon system fires Tomahawks, giving it sufficient nominal range to reach portions of China's coast from northern Luzon. The Marines followed with NMESIS, an unmanned launcher carrying Naval Strike Missiles, brought to Batanes for exercises last year and to Calayan this June — islands closer to Taiwan than to Manila. By Manila's own account, the system remained in the country after last spring's drills so Philippine Marines could train on it. The word for all of this is rotational. And the word is doing a lot of work.
Philippines arms in parallel
The Philippines is arming in parallel. Indian-made BrahMos anti-ship batteries are positioned in Zambales, putting the contested Scarborough Shoal within the system's reported range. New frigates are arriving from Korean shipyards. In July, Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro called the acquisition of five retired Abukuma-class destroyer escorts a done deal — one of the largest transfers of retired combatants Japan has ever made to a foreign navy. A decade ago, that sentence would have been unthinkable.
Japan is the other anchor, and its shift runs deepest. Tokyo is driving defense spending toward 2% of GDP, has ordered 400 Tomahawks, and in March placed its first upgraded, long-range Type 12 missiles on Kyushu, within reach of portions of the Chinese mainland. Its southwest islands are being garrisoned one by one, radars and launchers working down the Ryukyus toward Taiwan. In November, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told parliament that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could constitute a situation threatening Japan's survival — the legal classification that could permit her forces to exercise collective self-defense. No sitting prime minister had ever stated it so plainly. Beijing answered with diplomatic threats, economic pressure, and increased maritime activity. She did not retract it. A reciprocal access agreement, in force since last September, now lets Japanese and Philippine forces train on each other's soil. The spokes of the American alliance system are lashing themselves to each other, no longer only to the hub.
This is the most serious military architecture assembled in the Western Pacific since the Cold War. But earnest and decisive are different words, and the view from that hilltop showed the distance between them. The wounded in that bay were struck at Second Thomas Shoal on July 20. On July 23 and July 24, Chinese ships blasted Philippine forces with water cannons. The American response, so far, has been measured — a pattern that raises questions about whether the infrastructure will translate into credible deterrence. For a deeper look at how alliance dynamics are shifting, see our analysis of India-Japan strategic convergence. The situation in the South China Sea also echoes broader trends in multipolar order after American primacy.
